The South Slav Federation and the Macedonian Question

Georgi Dimitrov

Dimitrov’s account of the history of the South Slav Federation and the
Macedonian question which formed part of his classic report to the 5th Congress
of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1948 is important as it represents the
application of the Marxist principle of constructing federative states based on
the right of nations to secession along the lines of the formation of the Soviet
Union itself, a principle which had been adopted by the CPC, the Indo-Chinese
communists and our very own CPI in their revolutionary days. Writing shortly
after the previous article Dimitrov tells us of the effects of the nationalist
course of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia on the national question
particularly with reference to the Pirin district of Macedonia which lay within
the territory of new democratic Bulgaria. This history is virtually unknown in
the communist movement today principally because Dimitrov’s writings on this
as on many important questions have been sought to be obliterated after the
advent of revisionism in Bulgaria. This is apparent from the version of the
report to the 5th Congress of the BCP which was published in volume 14 of
Dimitrov’s writings in Bulgarian which omits the passages published below.1
The same is the case in the editions of Dimitrov’s writings which have been
published in English.2 Dimitrov’s
perceptiveness on the national question in the Balkans emerges in its full
clarity today when German and U.S. imperialism have smashed the Yugoslav
Federation:

‘In the past, the unification of the South Slavs has always met with the
stubborn resistance of German imperialism. Today the new pretenders for world
domination – the American and British imperialists – oppose unification and
merger of the Southern Slavs.’

The Marxist-Leninist forces which are regrouping today in the Balkans will no
doubt be compelled to return to the principles of Lenin, Stalin and Dimitrov on
the national question.

Fraternal Yugoslavia, with whom the closest brotherly
relations and a common and age-old ideal united us – the establishment of a
South Slav federation – is unfortunately ruled today by men – Tito and his group
– who betrayed the great doctrine of Marx-Leninism, the pre-condition for mutual
confidence between the Communist parties and the basis for their cooperation on
the road to socialism. The nationalist policy of the Tito group increasingly
alienates Yugoslavia from the USSR and the new democracies, subjects it more and
more to the danger of falling into the clutches of greedy imperialism. Our Party
watches with anxiety the degeneration of the present Yugoslav Communist Party
leaders into an ordinary bourgeois-chauvinist clique, inimical to Communism. But
we do not doubt the loyalty of the Yugoslav Communist Party to internationalism
and Marx-Leninism and its ability to bring Yugoslavia back again into the fold
of the USSR and the people’s democracies....

The treachery of Tito’s group towards the USSR and the united
democratic anti-imperialist camp, its anti-Marxist and nationalistic course,
condemned by the Informburo, by all Communist parties and all genuine democratic
organizations, found expression in its attitude toward the federation of the
Southern Slavs and the Macedonian question.

With the overthrow of the Fascist dictatorship in Bulgaria on
September 9th 1944, and the establishment in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia of a
people’s democratic regime under the leaders of the Communist parties, most
propitious conditions were created for a consistent and democratic settlement of
all outstanding issues between the two countries, including the Macedonian
question.

Under the newly created domestic and international
conditions, the vital interests of the Bulgarian and Yugoslav peoples made it
imperative that both nations seek the closest rapprochement which would quickly
lead to their economic and political unification – to the establishment of a
federation of South Slavs. Such a federation, resting firmly on friendship with
the USSR and fraternal collaboration with the other new democracies, could have
successfully defended the freedom and independence of its peoples and ensured
their proper development toward socialism. Within the framework of such a
federation would have been solved correctly, all the old unsolved problems
legated by the bourgeois-monarchic regimes regarding the unification of the
Macedonians from the Pirin district with the People’s Republic of Macedonia, as
well as the return to Bulgaria of the purely Bulgarian Western Border Region
which the Yugoslavia of King Alexander had grabbed after World War I.

Our Party firmly chose that course, relying on the word of
the Yugoslav Communists to whom we were tied by common work and association
covering a period of many years. This is the present stand of our Party. But the
nationalist leaders of Yugoslavia went off this only correct path. After the two
Governments had agreed on a series of measures regarding the forthcoming
establishment of the federation, the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist
Party informed our Party in March 1948 that it had changed its mind on that
question, that one should not rush the federation, and refused to discuss the
matter any further. At the same time, the Yugoslav leaders set as the central
task the transformation of the Pirin district into an autonomous region with a
view to its inclusion in Yugoslavia, independently of the existing understanding
on the creation of a federation.

Evidently this turn-about of Tito and his group on the
question is intimately tied up with their betrayal of Marx-Leninism. This group
is skidding down the slippery road of nationalism and today takes the same stand
as the Greater Serbia chauvinists who were striving for hegemony in the Balkans
and for Macedonia’s annexation to Serbia and Yugoslavia.

The disclosures made at the Congress of the Albanian
Communists in regard to the aggressive intentions of the Tito group toward
Albania are another proof of its double-faced policy, crass nationalism and
deviation from the united Socialist front of the Soviet Union and the people’s
democracies.

There exist two alternatives for the solution of the
Macedonian question which for decades on end has been in the centre of Balkan
rivalries and wars.

1) A democratic revolution for Macedonia’s liberation from
the Turkish yoke. This road was chosen by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization (IMRO) – Gotse Delchev, Sandansky and others – as well as by the
Macedonian revolutionary Social-Democrat Union – Hadji Diniov, Nicola Larez and
others. These Macedonian organizations enjoyed the full support of our Party,
many of whose members were activists in the Macedonian revolutionary movement.

2) The bourgeois nationalist road, viz. the liberation of
Macedonia from the Turkish yoke through a war, and its annexation by one or
several Balkan states. Our Party has always firmly opposed military-bourgeois
nationalism and has fought steadfastly against the plans of the Balkan
monarchies and the bourgeois-capitalist cliques to enslave and carve up
Macedonia.

The second alternative prevailed, leading to the two Balkan
wars (1912-13). Macedonia was freed from the Turkish yoke, but carved up between
Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria.

In the face of the growing danger of an imperialist
aggression on the Balkans, the Balkan Socialist parties raised the slogan of a
Balkan democratic federation. United in a mighty federation, the Balkan peoples
could have defended more easily their freedom and independence against any
aggressive moves by the imperialist forces. At the same time, the federation
would have facilitated the solution of all pending national issues in the
Balkans including that of Macedonia. Within a Balkan democratic federation,
trisected Macedonia was to unite as a state with equal rights.

Our Party correctly bracketed the solution of the Macedonian
question with the creation of a Balkan democratic federation. That is why it has
waged a long, consistent and uncompromising fight against Greater Bulgarian
chauvinism. It adhered to that position during the Balkan wars and World War I.

What is the essence of the Greater Bulgarian chauvinism of
the Bulgarian monarchist and capitalist bourgeoisie?

It consists, first, of an attempt to gain hegemony in the
Balkans and, second, of an attempt to forcibly incorporate Macedonia into the
Bulgarian state. This policy, which during World War II was carried out under
the overlordship of Nazi Germany, was in fact a treacherous policy, concealing
the attempts of Nazi Germany to turn so-called ‘Great Bulgaria’ into a German
colony.

After the October Socialist Revolution and the accession of
the Balkan Socialist parties to the Communist International, the Balkan
Socialist Federation became a Balkan Communist Federation, in which our Party
played a very active role. The Balkan Communist Federation saw the solution of
all Balkan problems, including that of Macedonia, in the creation of a Balkan
democratic federation, capable of defending the freedom and independence of all
Balkan peoples.

Our Party had thus taken a correct and traditional stand on
the Balkan questions and also offered a truly democratic solution of the
Macedonian question. The slogan for a Balkan federative republic was in complete
harmony with the Marx-Leninist doctrine on the national problem.

"The conscious workers in the Balkan countries", wrote Lenin
in 1912, ‘were the first to raise the slogan for a consistently democratic
solution of the national problem on the Balkans. It was the slogan of a
federative Balkan republic. As a result of the weakness of the democratic
classes in the present Balkan states (where the proletariat is numerically small
and the peasantry backward, illiterate and disunited) the economically and
politically necessary union became an alliance of Balkan monarchs’.

Prior to World War II there had grown up a powerful
progressive Macedonian movement in Bulgaria which advocated the right of
self-determination of the Macedonian people, as a free nation. It was fully
supported by our Party which, during the war, worked in full agreement with the
Macedonian Communists. Bulgarian partisans fought shoulder to shoulder with
Macedonian partisans against the German-Bulgarian troops of occupation. Our
Party warmly welcomed the establishment of a Macedonian People’s Republic,
within the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.

As is well known, our Party made great sacrifices in the
struggle for the defence of the Macedonian people’s right to self-determination,
and against the aggressive policy of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie.

After the Bled Agreement, and in order to facilitate the
process of rapprochement and future unification of the Macedonian regions in
both countries, our Party gave its consent to the introduction of the official
Macedonian language as an obligatory subject in all schools in the Pirin
district, and admitted many Macedonian teachers from Skopie as instructors, as
well as Macedonian librarians to diffuse Macedonian books. This was a proof that
our Party harboured the greatest sympathy toward the unification of the
Macedonian people.

But our Party was double-crossed in its good intentions by
the Belgrade and Skopie leaders. Most of the teachers and librarians sent from
Skopie, evidently on instructions from their Yugoslav leaders, became agents of
a Greater Yugoslav and anti-Bulgarian chauvinist propaganda, and later, after
the treachery of Tito’s group toward the USSR and the united anti-imperialist
camp, turned into an anti-Soviet agency.

That which the agents of Kulishevsky did in the Pirin
district was only a reflection of what has happened within the People’s Republic
of Macedonia. Under the pretext of a struggle against Greater Bulgaria
chauvinism and with the aid of the state apparatus and all other public
organizations – political and cultural – a systematic campaign was waged against
everything Bulgarian, against the Bulgarian people, their culture, their
people’s democracy, their Fatherland Front and especially against our Party. No
Bulgarian books or newspapers, not even ‘Rabotnichesko Delo’, were permitted
into the People’s Republic of Macedonia. All Bulgarian inscriptions on old
school buildings and other monuments were meticulously erased. Family names, as
for instance Kulishev, Uzunov, Tsvetkov and others, became, as we know,
Kulishevsky, Uztunovsky, Tsvetkovsky, so that they would have nothing in common
with Bulgarian names.

Public officials in the Macedonian People’s Republic had the
cheek to make declarations directed against the Bulgarian people and against
Bulgaria. In his well-known speech, delivered on March 23rd 1948 before the 2nd
Congress of the Macedonian People’s Front, Kulishevsky slanderously accused our
country and our people’s authority of oppressing the Macedonian population in
the Pirin district.

Kulishevsky’s provocatory speech was avidly reproduced by the
newspapers, agencies and radios of the Anglo-American imperialists in order to
launch a scurrilous campaign against the People’s Republic of Bulgaria and the
unification of the Macedonian people.

Last July, from the tribune of the 5th Congress of the
Yugoslav Communist Party in Belgrade, the main darts in the attacks against the
people’s democracies were directed against our nation. In their speeches Tito,
Djilas, Tempo, Kulishevsky, and Vlahov spluttered out their chauvinist venom
against Bulgaria, against our Party, whose fault, it seems, consists of its
refusal to let them grab the Pirin district and its condemnation of the Yugoslav
leaders’ treason. General Tempo went even so far in his chauvinist delusion as
to insult and deride the anti-Fascist struggle of the Bulgarian people and their
partisan movement, although it is well-known that our partisans fought together
with Yugoslav partisans and that our army actively participated under the
command of Marshal Tolbukhin in the war for the final liberation of Yugoslavia.

Toward the end of September 1948 the Prime Minister of the
Serbian People’s Republic, Peter Stambolich had the effrontery to publicly
slander our country in the Belgrade Skupstina, alleging that responsible
Bulgarian politicians were spreading propaganda directed against Yugoslavia’s
territorial integrity and sovereignty.

It is clear that such slanders can have only one aim: to
antagonize the peoples of Yugoslavia against the Bulgarian people, to create a
chasm between the two fraternal peoples and to furnish imperialist propaganda
with a weapon with which to heap new lies and slanders on Bulgaria.

Late in November 1948 a trial was held in Skopie against
Bulgarian Fascists, police agents and other war criminals, who during the
occupation had indulged in excesses in Macedonia. This trial, however, was
turned into a vicious chauvinist campaign against the Bulgarian people and
against our country. The prosecutor, the judges and the accused Fascist
criminals in this trial, according to a pre-arranged understanding, with
touching unanimity cast aspersions on the Bulgarian people.

The nationalist and chauvinist policy of the Titos and
Kulishevskys, which is the other side of the coin of their anti-Soviet course,
is not only directed against Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people but also against
the Macedonian people. This policy has adopted the methods of the Bulgarian and
Serbian nationalists and is sowing hatred among the Macedonian people, inciting
one part against the other, resorting to terror and persecution against those
who disapprove of the official course of the present Yugoslav leaders. In this
way the realization of the age-old ideal of the Macedonian people – their
national unification – is being artificially delayed.

The population of the Pirin district, however, refuses to
fall for this vicious anti-Bulgarian and dissident propaganda. It is opposed to
the inclusion of its land into Yugoslavia before the realization of a federation
between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, because since time immemorial it feels itself
economically, politically, and culturally tied to the Bulgarian people and does
not wish to cut loose from it. Besides, amongthat population are still
alive the traditions of the Macedonian revolutionary movement and, in
particular, of its Seres wing, headed by Sandansky, which has always advocated
federation as the only correct solution of the Macedonian question.

We are well aware that the nationalist and chauvinist policy
of the Belgrade and Skopie leaders of the Tito and Kulishevsky type do not have
the approval of the majority of the Macedonian people who are convinced that
their national unification will be built on an understanding between Yugoslavia
and Bulgaria, in cooperation with these peoples and with the powerful assistance
of the USSR.

Our Party has always advocated and continues to advocate,
that Macedonia belongs to the Macedonians. True to the traditions of the
Macedonian revolutionaries, together with all honest Macedonian patriots, we are
deeply convinced that the Macedonian people will translate into reality their
national unity and will ensure their future as a free nation with equal rights
only within the framework of a federation of Southern Slavs.

In the past, the unification of the South Slavs has always
met with the stubborn resistance of German imperialism. Today the new pretenders
for world domination – the American and British imperialists – oppose the
unification and merger of the Southern Slavs. They have acquired worthy allies
in the present Yugoslav leaders.

Assured of the support of the USSR, the new democracies and
the world forces of democracy, the Southern Slavs will be able to smash the
opposition of the imperialists and realize their vitally necessary unity. The
main obstacle to the federation of the Southern Slavs are today the traitors to
Marx-Leninism, the nationalist leadership in Belgrade and Skopie, the Titos,
Djilases, Kulishevskys, Vlahovs. But history is marching on and sweeps aside
everything which stands in the way of progress. The cause of the unification of
the Southern Slavs, including the Macedonian people, will triumph.